Twitter says it will warn hundreds of thousands of tweeters who deliberately or inadvertently interacted with Kremlin bots during the 2016 US presidential election.
The micro-blogging website said that, during the White House race, some 677,775 people followed accounts controlled by Russian propaganda groups, or liked or …

I would have to agree to some extent. There is a lot of deflection going on, trying to blame Russian maskirovka for entirely home-grown delusions and conspiracy theories about birth certificates, pizza parlours and god knows what else. It's essentially (and ironically) a variant of Dolchstoßlegende, only this time with the intention of unjustly exonerating the "civilians back home".

People believed the rubbish they did because they wanted to; because the confirmation bias was iron-clad and because unmitigated freedom of speech and freedom of association creates an echo chamber capable of creating a singularity of stupidity. It's a pervasive problem. Obama is Kenyan, climate change isn't happening, angels are real, guns reduce murder rates, send Tammy Lou Snakejuggler a cheque check so God will bless your business, POTUS Shield (!?!) ... and they want to worry about/blame Russians!!??

It would be quite useful to see unbiased reporting and analysis about assertions like this, with quantitative data. Political ignorance in the US has long been known and somewhat widely reported upon. Ilya Somin's "Democracy and Political Ignorance" has been out since 2013 and a revision was published in 2016. While it addresses ignorance of government organization and political process more than the effects of either deliberate or unintentional misinformation, the two are plainly related.

A significant question that seems rarely addressed is the relation of the apparent Russian organized information to the total, both in quantity and in source. It seems unlikely that the Russian organizations described made up what they propagated as much as they amplified garbage ideas already current to some degree in the politically illiterate segments of the US population. Further, based on what probably is a comparatively very small numbers of such actors and their productions, claimed success in disrupting the US polity seems a rather extreme stretch.

Indeed, the frenzied reporting on it may well be far more disruptive: in stirring up an oversensitive president to actions and statements that do him and the country no good, and in generating numerous congressional and criminal investigations that, so far, have not revealed much of great consequence. The investigations are incomplete and may yet bear fruit, but much of what has been reported so far can be understood as originating in the political ignorance of the President and some his advisors, both now and during the campaign. It should not be overlook that Donald J Trump is among the least prepared of all US presidents, in both experience and temperament.

It is somewhat a fluke that despite his obvious limitations, he was an energetic and effective campaigner whose message, for what it is worth, resonated well with a near majority of the (on average, fairly ignorant) voters, while his chief opponent, with her own burdens, was less energetic and effective in key states. The Russians might have had some effect, but not likely enough to measure in the overall noise of the campaign. Democrats and others looking to assign blame would be better off focusing on Jill Stein, who collected enough votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan to give Clinton a win in those states and in the electoral vote.

An "influence campaign" is not capable to make a shiny new belief especially on short order. The good ones usually do not even try. They take an existing one and gently steer it where they like it.

There is an idiotic belief for every idiot out there. Selecting the ones which are likely to be contagious, nurturing them and financing them takes skill. I believe the Russians have proved that they possess this skill to an extent which makes Radio Free Europe and the Beeb foreign service look like utter amateurs. One take away from the whole affair is that the whole of Radio Free Europe (and other similar outfits) as well as Beeb foreign service must be sacked and rehired from the same place Russians hired theirs (including management).

It's plain obvious to anyone who keeps their eyes and ears open that social media and the web/internet are being used to try to bend and warp reality for anyone gullible enough to believe it. And that means enough people to effect an election. This is not just a Russia thing, it's coming from any number of sources, some of them close to home with ordinary individuals being motivated to propagate the BS.

It's plain obvious to anyone who keeps their eyes and ears open that social media and the web/internet are being used to try to bend and warp reality for anyone gullible enough to believe it.

It's plain obvious that "Hindenberg" Limbaugh and the rest of the AM Radio liars have been doing this for years, as has Faux News to a large extent. Tricky to pin that on foreigners though, and as this proves, both sides of the political divide prefer to pin everything on foreigners (Firewall the Russians!!, Brick wall the Mexicans!!) and avoid awkward introspection.

> I believe the Russians have proved that they possess this skill to an extent which makes Radio Free Europe and the Beeb foreign service look like utter amateurs.

The Russians? Come on now, Radio Voice of South Africa did make the Beeb look like utter amateurs! Radio Free Europe... I think the only ones who ever listened to that were the Americans themselves. It was so bad it wasn't even laughable.

Radio Moscow, meanwhile? Yes, they were good. They mostly talked about science and culture, and a little bit now and then about life in the good old Soviet world, minus a few details you understand. What I used to like about them was that they never slagged off the opposition, or strutted about with airs of superiority.

Nowadays, you want to go to Africa and learn from Chinese media how it's done.

Re: @Lysenko

they sure didn't start the fire, but they certainly were shipping fuel by the tanker-full

Limbaugh et. al. Matt. 1:3.

Sort out the "license to lie" and Plutocracy aspects of the 1A and then there'll be time to worry about peripheral details like twitterbots. Easier to just blame the evil foreigners and keep the "Shining Plutocrat Auction on a Hill[sic]" though.

Re: @Lysenko

Re: @Lysenko

Ahhh yes, all those damaging tweets from the Evil East warping fragile nubile Western minds on the interwebs and "swinging" elections. Meanwhile, in the real world, US Congress has authorized a record number of *real* weapons to be distributed throughout the planet in 2017. Tweets vs. bullets. I know which I'd rather be exposed to.

Re: "and they want to worry about/blame Russians!!??"

As for countries sticking their noses into other countries' business, that of course is exactly what the USA does all the time - and before it Britain, France and the other colonial powers.

I won't go to the considerable trouble, or bore everyone, but I suggest you go away and compile a list of countries that the USA has (a) invaded, (b) physically attacked, (c) terrorised, (d) destabilised since, let's say 1848. Don't forget to include the virtual occupation of Russia from 1991-1999 when Western "experts" streamed in, grabbed all the wealth that wasn't nailed down, and raced back out.

The overwhelmingly predominant reason why Mr Putin is so popular is that he, quite literally, gave Russians back their own country.

Re: "and they want to worry about/blame Russians!!??"

One of the most problematic aspects of this story is the fact that Twitter has deleted all the evidence. So now, if we want to check what, specifically, these accounts said - we can't.

This is a reflection of what makes Twitter (and other 'social media' platforms) much sneakier than conventional media. If something is broadcast on Radio Free Europe, anyone can record it, listen to it, play it back later - that means you know what was said, and you have all the information you need to counter it. But on Twitter or Facebook, there's no telling what a given person has been exposed to. It's hard to counter propaganda that you can't even see.

Doubly hard, of course, when your audience has been told that everything you say is lies.

You forgot to add

Fake news

The idea that political persuasion is electoral interference is indeed fake news.

The corollary is that only approved organisations can speak on politics, in which case, welcome to the United Soviet States of America, comrades!

It seems some people and organisations think that the free dissemination of ideas between and through societies should be sacrificed to keep a particular political party in power.

The prevalence and pervasiveness of these views in the media is what scares me. Trumps idiotic tweets about building walls things are irrelevant compared to so many powerful organisations trying to arbitrate speech.

It's a bit of a snicker, really.

Trump clinched the electoral win in 3 states: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. All told, about 107,000 voters determined the outcome of the election. IIRC, those states had a roughly 5% write-in protest vote. If only 1/5 of the protest vote in those states was turned away from Clinton by Russian Twitter and Facebook posts, and various Russian fake news sites, then --

-- well, Putin succeeded. He turned the US election.

I agree that it was mass stupidity. I agree that people believed lies because of confirmation bias, desire for change even if it destroys the US as a democratic republic, a sense of disenfranchisement, and all of that. The US is deeply dysfunctional.

But to the point of the article: we have seen some of the election-tampering iceberg but not the whole of it. Even when we see the slime on the very bottom, though, I doubt that the US constitution will stand -- because the legislative and judicial branches have shown far too much deference to the executive. That's the royal road to despotism. American democratia, requiesce in pace.

Re: It's a bit of a snicker, really.

Michigan has swung Democrat wise in president since 80's til Trump. Funny how Clinton just expected to win Michigan yet Never set foot in Our State til Monday Nov 7th the day before the vote. Til that day she didn't give 2 s*&#'s about Michigan. Trump on other hand was here 4-5 times during primaries and presidential campaign.

Re: It's a bit of a snicker, really.

Re: It's a bit of a snicker, really.

"Putin succeeded. He turned the US election."

Well, maybe he did, and maybe he didn't. But what are the comparative numbers, in terms of like tweets, followed posters, and such like, from the "official" participants in the US presidential election (political parties, declared and affiliated voters), and also the unofficial but permitted participants, such as US businesses, NGOs and the like? Not to mention the number of foreign interests declaring for either side? I would hazard a guess that the Russian involvement pales into total insignificance compared to all the other noise.

Blaming the Russians is nonsense - Trump's electoral base is motivated by deep seated feelings of anger and exclusion directed at a US establishment that they believe hasn't worked for them, has taken them for granted, and worked largely for the advancement of the better off. Unfortunately for those voters, Trump will be no different.

Re: strings...

Re: It's a bit of a snicker, really.

> "...Trump will be no different."

He just spent an entire year proving you wrong. Okay, DC's malign influence may eventually corrupt even The Donald, but I kinda doubt it. In fact it looks like he's determined to be the changer rather than the changee. Lots of Entrenched Interests are feeling the swamp getting more turbulent.

Both the Left and the GOPe RINOs hate his progressing changes to the old ways of the swamp, and are currently engaged in an increasingly amusing attempt to frame this 'president of their nightmares.' Good luck with that, guys!

A successful frame could only have occurred in the first few months, but now a year has passed in futility and sadly (for them) they have nothing but smoke. They have failed, and their clamorous charges are revealed as naked desperation.

Meanwhile, we draw very close to seeing the whole dirty democrat election scandal blow up in their faces like a loaded cigar. Nice.

Re: It's a bit of a snicker, really.

"All told, about 107,000 voters determined the outcome of the election".

As Winston Churchill is said to have complained, this is the sort of thing up with which I will not put.

The quoted sentence tries hard to make it sound as though nobody but those 107,000 voters had any influence on the result of the election. But you have deliberately left out of the picture the huge number of voters who produced a near deadlock in the states' votes. 62 million odd people voted for Trump, and 65 million odd voted for Clinton. Don't you think those 62 million deserve some credit? Without them, the 107,00 wouldn't have accomplished much.

Re: It's a bit of a snicker, really.

Absolutely, yes. The Russian interference was a drop in the bucket. But the election was so close, you can plausibly claim this drop swung it.

Of course it doesn't mean anything without the tens of thousands of other drops, all of which you could claim also swung it.

Most notably, I would point to the media's abject failure to stand up to Trump. We hear a lot about how they were all "in the tank" for Clinton, but that's bullshit. The leader writers all favoured her, because it's their job to think about these things, and anyone who spent more than three seconds thinking about the candidates could only, rationally, come to one conclusion - but the news writers have a different set of incentives, and Trump played them like a Fender stratocaster. Every time he launched some drivelling Twitter rant, he got a million dollars' worth of publicity for free. He's still doing it today.

Sure, Clinton's campaign made some truly howling mistakes. Some that even I could see, even at this distance at the time. But it was the media that lost it for her.

Re: It's a bit of a snicker, really.

"American democratia, requiesce in pace".

The USA has never been a democracy, was never meant to be a democracy, and is not a democracy. At present - and probably since the mid-19th century - it is an oligarchy. With the clever but not very significant ornamental touch that every few years, the people (or most of them) are allowed to choose which of a selected small group of oligarchs will pretend to exercise power.

The Russian system is not only far more honest, but frankly rather more democratic too.

Exactly. The Russians may well have been directly involved but there are large numbers of "reputation management" and "marketing" companies who will proudly boast about their abilities to force "trending" stories and influence social media users. Just because some of the accounts are related to Russia doesn't mean that they weren't paid for by party machines, supporters groups or even individuals from with the US.

Of course, I have no doubt that there was Russian state involvement, just as there likely was some level of state involvement from other interested countries trying to influence one way or another. But I'd expect any state sponsored Twitter bots to be rented from outside the state involved. Maybe all the Russian accounts used were bought by other countries including the US and the US bots were bought by Russians.

Follow-on to the previous post... sigh.

Some US legislators have called for the release of classified memo alleging FBI bias against the current administration. The relevant bit: "The use of the hashtag #releasethememo increased 315,500 percent in roughly 24 hours on 600 Twitter accounts known or suspected to be under Kremlin influence" according to nonpartisan monitors. Reffy: Reuters.

Re: "B****" --

Re: "B****" --

Lets face it, Clinton lost the POTUS race because she is part of a criminal family and Americans could see that. No amount of Russian propaganda could have saved or sealed her fate.

I don't like trump either, honestly I think they're both wrinkly old bellends who should be in a nursing home, not in office, but hey ho, we are where we are

Which brings me onto another touchy subject, we are where we are because of what has gone on in the past, funding ISIS, sorry !!!!, Moderate rebels, carrying out stupid false flag attacks in the guise of "Jihadi John", what a character, beheading people but kindly editing the gruesome deed out of the video, the post editing was pretty good, kind of Hollywood, then there is the pretext for wars, 911 and 77.

Personally I wreckon trump is literally the dancing buffoon put in front of us with his comb over (the perfect symbol for what they, the deranged established power structure, are now trying to achieve.

Fake news is now in the public consciousness, but in a laughable way, the message is, if you believe "conspiracy theories", then you're just like trump

False flag terrorism is the fake-ist news there is

For me, 911 and 77 as bonafide false flag attacks, is unquestionable

Skyscrapers falling into their own footprint, defying the laws of physics, if we are to believe the official account

Or

Terrorists, just out of pure coincidence. just so happened to pick the exact same targets that a mock terror exercises was being carried out, on that day. So said Peter Powers of Visor Consultants, organised by Jewish business men (if you believe his statement to that effect, i don't)

So yeah, I'm glad Clinton lost

I'm not happy that trump won either, but he is the lesser of two evils and I get to laugh at their attempt at combing over the last 19 years of BS lies about their warmongering shenanigans

Re: "B****" --

That is actually a libellous statement, they have never been convicted of a single offence, unlike Trump who has thousands of court judgments against him and his companies.

What probably poisoned the Clinton brand was 30 years of relentless lies about her from the Republicans and the Republican supporting press. Clinton aware of the Streisand Effect chose not to defend herself, probably a mistake.

Re: "B****" --

What probably poisoned the Clinton brand was 30 years of relentless lies about her from the Republicans and the Republican supporting press.

Maybe. If the truth was widely known she would not have made it either. The list of donors to the Clinton's foundation and the list of payments for her appearing at a junket make a very insightful reading. IT IS STILL NOT BEING DISCUSSED OPENLY till this day. Guardian started, did one article looking into the donors to her and Blair foundation and then immediately shut up. Wonder why...

Re: "B****" --

She's never been prosecuted - and that's despite committing a number of crimes. But she has enough influence to avoid it.

HRC is provably guilty right now for three crimes - Perjury, Obstruction of Justice, and Security violations. That she gets a free pass because too many people have an interest in ensuring that she doesn't get to pay for her crimes, but we can live in hop[e that she will eventually. Perjury - lying on oath to a Federal Judge on the release of emails; Obstruction - deletion of emails AFTER a subpoena was issued, and Security violations because no intent is required under the law, and classified information was widely propagated outside the appropriate government systems. Plus there's past "indiscretions" like Whitewater - conspiracy to defraud.

Oh we can find obvious crimes easily enough, finding people sufficiently uncorrupt to prosecute her is somewhat harder.

Re: "B****" --

"I don't like trump either, honestly I think they're both wrinkly old bellends who should be in a nursing home, not in office, but hey ho, we are where we are"

I think that is the most important point. The partisan voters will vote for their party, even if a monkey is up for election. The remainder will vote for various reasons, some of which will be to choose what looks like the lesser evil rather than not vote at all.

Re: Namecalling

I am perhaps a bit old-fashioned. I think anytime a man refers to a woman as a b**** or a white refers to a black as a n*****, they deserve disrespect. Happy to oblige. (From his writing style, I infer that cyke1 is a youngish white man. Among other things, "yea" for "yeah" is a common error in that age-group.

How about it, conservative boyos? Can you put an objectively sourced number on "Hillary bots", as we can on Kremlin bots? How about it, Big John? Got data?

Re: "B****" --

Posted like a typical numpty who doesn't understand the words and labels that is written on their "distract the proles from the clusterfuck going on in the Whitehouse" script handed down to them by folks who really couldn't give a stuff if their shills live or die, only whether they'll get to keep a few % worth of tax which would pay for shills outgoings for a couple of million years.

Re: "B****" --

Can I join in?

Y'all as bad as each other and looking for blame on either the left or the right is not going to solve any of your problems.

The leaders of both parties are fully aware of this and the circus carries on while the people get shat on. This is allowed to happen because your media promotes the interest in the fake reality tv crap for the masses thus removing your ability of logical thinking and empathy.

Re: Follow-on to the previous post... sigh.

He is the perfect Russian president, scary enough to justify arms sales but not enough of a leader to gain anything. Corrupt enough that the Russian economy stays out of competition and we get to sell his friends nice mansions in London

If it wasn't for the fact that he isn't a committed communist I would assume he is an MI5 agent. Although the shirt-off posing does suggest he has a touch of the Peterhouse about him.

Re: Follow-on to the previous post... sigh.

If it wasn't for the fact that he isn't a committed communist I would assume he is an MI5 agent.

And there's the crux of the situation. He isn't a communist but he certainly does follow the twisted sister of communism which is crony capitalism. It's still essentially a command economy, how else does one direct to whom the money goes, and given that Putin may well be the richest man on earth - unofficially of course. In the end, while he may not be a communist, he's certainly the next "best" thing. Oddly that largely fits most everyone in the US Congress with the only difference being some want money and others want control and, unfortunately, they're willing to trade one for the other. I'll let you figure out which color team desires money and which desires power.

Re: Follow-on to the previous post... sigh.

You assumed correct, but it was not a result of an intention, it was a blowback.

I suggest listening a couple of times to Sir Andrew Wood - the same one who gave a glowing reference to Christopher Steele of the infamous "Golden Shower with Hookers in the Metropole" dossier.

He actually means it when he insist that it is our sovereign right to finance every nutter inside Russia as well as every nutter around Russia including those that blow up primary schools and maternity wards. Anyone in his sane mind after listening to him for 5 minutes would have sacked him. We did not. Not just that - we kept him in the role for more than a decade. He is not alone - previous NATO chiefs, etc come to mind. All of them utterly incompetent and without the even most basic understanding of cause, effect and consequences of their idiotic actions. Something we will have to deal with now for half a century (at least).

Re: Follow-on to the previous post... sigh.

Trust me, these kids in the US don't even know how to spell Yeltsin, let alone begin to understand what happened in Eastern Europe or the amount of tax-payer funded propaganda operating in the name of "democracy". Many if not most I grew up with only knew of France and Germany (and that was after high school Geography classes) when asked to name European countries. Then these same kids grew up and got "woke", "becuz NPR!!".

Re: Is there any evidence...

Yes. If a person Liked or Retweeted, Replied, Linked or Tagged a biased tweet from an account controlled by Russia they were duped. If their opinion wasn't formed by the propaganda it provided confirmation bias - where there is enough confirmation bias even the most outlandish content becomes believable.

Re: Is there any evidence...

Well, I for one don't believe that Saddam Hussein had any WMD (unless some of the poison gas Donald Rumsfeld sold him was still lying around). I don't believe that Colonel Qadafi sponsored terrorism or was responsible for the Lockerbie atrocity. I don't believe that the Syrian government has ever used chemical weapons against its own people, or anyone else. I don't believe that "the Russians" or anyone to do with them shot down MH17. I don't believe it was wrong for Russia to allow Crimea to rejoin it.

I suppose I share all those beliefs with Mr Putin. Other beliefs we share are that the USA is not a democracy, that European leaders are mostly bought and owned by Washington and do what it tells them, that gold is heavy and valuable, and that 7 is a prime number.

Re: Is there any evidence...

> "...the USA is not a democracy"

Who said it was? The US system was set up specifically NOT to be a democracy. That's what all those annoying Congress-critters are doing. We are the masses, who have a history of being a bit too passionate at times, and too impulsive too, oy. We've elected those CC's to do our bidding, but have pre-arranged to make the process slow and cumbersome.

All of that has only one purpose; To put the brakes on the public passions, so that only well-reasoned ideas become law. So far it's worked a treat!

Re: Is there any evidence...

The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

Sounds like a title to a farce. The 2016 election gave the US a choice between a loud-mouthed blowhard and an unindicted felon (the email server is a felony violation of US law). Not exactly a thrilling choice as both were detested by large parts of the public. Add to the mix Felonia called over half the country 'deplorables' and did not bother to campaign in many key states. Bubba told the blockheads in Brooklyn Felonia needed to actively campaign in Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc if she really wanted to win. But what did a 2-term President know about winning elections, apparently not much.

The US Constitution makes the Presidential election in effect 50 simultaneous elections which the candidate must win the right combination to become President. It has been this way from the beginning.

Most of the reason Felonia lost was she ran a stupid campaign alienating more voters in key states like Michigan than Blowhard. Managing to alienate more than Blowhard is an accomplishment of sorts but the wrong kind.

Whatever minimal effect the Russians had has been overstated. Plus most of the 'analysis' assumed Blowhard was Putin puppet. Also, no one has truly tried to determine if Putin had a clear favorite. I suspect he would have preferred Felonia in reality on points.

Re: The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

Maybe they did. That you don't want to know is interesting.

Trump would clearly have been Putin's choice. As has been borne out by observable events: The attempt to return confiscated Russian compounds, the failure to implement sanctions on Russia, the brown-nosing of Putin during the campaigning and whilst President, his election and transition team meeting with known Russian agents and the desire to have a "back channel" of communication with the Kremlin that wouldn't be subject to any level of scrutiny. Nothing to do with large sums of money loaned to the Trump empire by Russians in the preceding decade influencing Trump's bias? That said, Trump could just be having a school girl crush on Putin's subversive methods of governance and law making which should frighten the crap out of anyone who values democracy.

Re: Trump..just..having a school girl crush on Putin's subversive methods of governance & law making

Actually Trump's biggest weakness is his honesty. Not that I attribute that honesty to any particular virtue - I think he is often too proud or lazy to go to the trouble of lying.

But that is another reason why the establishment hates his guts so ferociously. He keeps on letting the cat out of the bag, openly saying what US governments have been doing for decades - but in careful secrecy.

The main difference between someone like Trump and someone like Clinton or Obama is that Trump will telegraph that he means to knock you down. Whereas they will smile ingratiatingly, suggest a closer relationship, invite you to dinner, and poison you - then claim you had a "heart attack".

Re: The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

Trump would have been any sane person's choice, if they and their loved ones were to go on living.

Clinton's behaviour and statements made it seem very likely that she would deliberately start a war with Russia (and possibly China and Iran).

If you are sceptical, take a look at http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ and choose a few targets of your choice (such as your own neighbourhood).

I suggest 300 or 500 kilotons as a suitable yield. That's not a very big bomb at all - but modern ICBMs deliver a dozen or more of them, which is far more effective than one big warhead.

If an American aircraft were to shoot down a Russian aircraft in Syria - as Clinton suggested more than once - and the Russians, naturally, retaliated, there is no reason for the escalation to stop anywhere short of a full thermonuclear exchange.

Re: The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

Re: The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

If an American aircraft were to shoot down a Russian aircraft in Syria - as Clinton suggested more than once - and the Russians, naturally, retaliated, there is no reason for the escalation to stop anywhere short of a full thermonuclear exchange.

What happened to the rules based order the Americans keep talking about? Isn't shooting down aircraft over other sovereign states you are not at war with a violation of this order?

Re: The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

Why would Putin prefer Trump ? He'd already demonstrated that he could and did "own" Obama and Clinton.

Looking at it economically, Trump is a major problem for Putin because he will (and is) a major supporter of Fracking and continuing the expansion of the US Oil industry. Russia gets almost all of its foreign earnings from Oil and Gas (like 95%+) so any reduction in the price from increased US production is a serious restriction for Russia. Clinton would almost certainly have restricted expansion of the same US Oil industry and thus would have been in that respect far better for Putin.

And Trump is far from imposing any form of restriction on the US in terms of government and the like. Obama was far less "democratic" with his "pen and a phone" approach. Look at how in practice Trump is approaching these things - he has so far put the onus on the constitutionally correct place - Congress - to pass laws that reflect what he wants to do rather than just try to do so by executive action. For example Obama refused to enforce various US federal laws (on immigration for example) which is profoundly unconstitutional and against his oath of office; Trump wants to enforce them, and says if you want change (like on the "Dreamers") then Congress must act and change the law.

I'd say based just on performance, that Trump has acted like an impeccably democratic president in constitutional terms.

This sort of language "schoolgirl crush on Putin's subversive methods...." is just such bullshit - it far more closely describes Obama's approach. Only Obama was such a naif ! And back channels, can't you remember the "Tell Putin that I will have more flexibility after the election....." comment from one B Obama ? Trump and his team are perfectly allowed to change policy with regard to Russian once he has won the election, that's what happens, elections have consequences as the same B Obama once said...

Re: The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

The problem with your analysis is that you neglect to cover the problem with "fence sitters" Many voters were undecided which dummy to vote for. Those are the THOUSANDS that were influenced. It is the old axiom " Tell a lie enough times and people will believe it is true" Emails, Benghazi, Pizza brothels, assaults on minors, crooked deals, Iranian deal, etc. have never been proven after thousands of hours of investigation. BUT when the stories were told over and over again and Trump spouted them enough times to his "hate the establishment" supporters coupled with all these twitter accounts and tweets it is more probable then not that, enough people were influenced to defeat Hillary and elect a carnival barker/criminal/racist, bigot to a post he is NOT qualified to hold.

Re: The Russians Did It, The Russians Did It

Benghazi, the truth is out there ! Obama and Clinton conspired to tell the public that the cause was a video and it wasn't a planned terrorist attack (on 9/11 for Christ's sake) - and you and others like you swallowed that lie wholesale.

They abandoned those in Benghazi trying to defend the place and made zero attempts to do anything to help them because their real priority was to avoid this "incident" having a negative impact on the election campaign. Rotten human beings and the public should know that, but actually criminal, possibly not.

The Iranian issue is still being exposed, as Ben Rhodes revealed they actively "guided" ignorant and pathetically supine journalists on what "news" to release. The whole Hezbollah drug and money laundering investigation that was quite possibly spiked by the Obama administration in order to get a deal with Iran. How much else did they give away ? They did ship a plane load of cash in exchange for hostages and lied about that. I wouldn't trust anything about the official narrative on the deal as it was so massaged and managed - as the massager in chief (Rhodes) has admitted.

"we note that the web upstart hasn't said how many people total saw Moscow's retweeted or liked disinformation."

Some "disinformation" is true, though -- just inconvenient to some agendas. Does twitter break out all of its findings? Is there a functional difference between a retweet and a like of a given tweet? Does twitter expose its methodology for making its various (probably motivated) findings? Link(s) -- to that methodology and to verification of the findings -- if yes. If no, how would you classify or characterize such unsubstantiated claims?

Food for thought

Yes, exactly. Which raises the interesting question: who defines what is truth and what is "disinformation"?

Nearly a century ago Max Weber defined the state as the entity that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

Today, the state also claims the monopoly of deciding what is true and what is false.

In both the cases of force and truth, the state hates it when anyone else tries to horn in on its monopoly. People who try to use force without being a government are labelled terrorists. And people who try to tell the citizens of a nation anything that its government doesn't want them to believe... are labelled foreign propagandists.

Re: How?

The story as claimed by the democrat party is that the Russians hacked the democrat party and released documents to wikileaks that swung the election. (Wikileaks said that these were leaked by a disgruntled insider.)

Regardless, the information showed that Hillary Clinton had rigged the DNC votes so she'd be picked over Saunders. When people heard this, many of the idealistic Saunders supporters stayed at home instead of going to vote for clinton. This was at least somewhat covered in the media.

Further documents not given much publicity show that clinton deceided that she knew she was unpopular and so wanted to be against "pied piper" candidates that she'd easily beat, such as Donald Trump. They intended to influence this by telling the free and independent american press to elevate the publicity of these people, and ignore the rest to influence who the republicans choose so she and the democrat party bears direct responsibility for putting Trump in office. (source: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/1120/251)

This wasn't covered by the free and independent american press because it shows the mainstream media as being anything but independent, and deliberately colluding to get one candidate elected.

So in short, the wikileaks thing swung the election by showing exactly how corrupt clinton is and persuading enough people to stay at home or vote for the opposition. As noted, wikileaks says that this was a leak by a disgruntled idealistic saunders supporter. I think this sounds credible given previous leaks to wikileaks. The democrats say they were hacked by russia. (so Russia rigged the US election by revealing that Clinton rigged the US election)

Ultimately, who knows? Given that the last part of that document is called "muddying the waters" i'm somewhat skeptical of the whole russia thing as it's not backed by a shred of released information.

Please...

... would everyone who is complaining about "Russian influence" and "Russian propaganda" please look up Edward Bernays and do some reading about him.

Bernays was instrumental in getting the average American to stop thinking of Germans as clever, hard-working, conscientious good citizens, and start seeing them as raping, murderous Huns - in just two years. Why did he do that? Money. He was paid money to get the USA into WW1, so bankers would not lose the large sums they had lent to Britain and France.

Bernays then went on to get young women smoking, an impressive feat of brainwashing which shortened hundreds of millions of lives and may have caused as much pain, in aggregate, as WW1.

A visitor to Berlin at the end of the 1930s obtained an interview with Dr Goebbels, and reported to Bernays (on his return to New York) that Goebbels' study boasted a complete set of all Bernays' works. Goebbels spoke enthusiastically of Bernays' work and attributed his own success to having learned from the master.

And soon after, of course, the CIA was set up.

Not that Bernays was unique in his encouragement of the arts of persuasion and propaganda. But earlier white Aryan racist chauvinists such as Teddy Roosevelt were a lot more open about their beliefs and intentions. Bernays made it all a lot more clever and sophisticated.

Re: 911 tower falling onto its own footprint

Ever seen a building implosion? Collapsing into themselves is normal for them. The WTC towers were tube-types: strongest on the outside. Chicago's Willis Tower is similar: a cluster of nine tube structures.

Look, a Squirrel

Darpa put out an RFP right in front of god and everybody to hire a company to teach them how to "control the narrative", it was published on phys.org among other places.

The MIC takes sides. Under one of the "choices" we had, they could keep up with their writing their own procurement contracts and had a war friendly "leader". 'Under the upstart who had no chance - they thought, their corruption might have been (and now is) exposed.

I'm not making this up, it's on a non political tech site: https://phys.org/news/2011-10-darpa-master-propaganda-narrative-networks.html

They've been at this for awhile.

The dangerous ploy of blaming it all on the Russians..who we now can't make friends with like the upstart originally want to because of the also-dangerous but baseless collusion story - is backfiring as people begin to realize that there are a hell of a lot more sock pupped accounts in the intelligence community than just the Russian ones. They're there - but a small fraction of the total.

I know it's dangerous to ask people to have a sense of proportion (they might just eat the fairy cake) but hey - Russia is accused of spending a few $100,000 of bucks on this. The main players spent a billion.

Are they really that much smarter? (ratio of 10,000!). How about our own sock puppets? How about ones in the UK...

I dislike the orange clown, I disliked the war president and his party for what they did for big pharma and all foreign brown skinned people. I disliked shrub, willy, and so on going back. A very long time ago I figured out what a lot of more famous people have - if elections mattered, they wouldn't be allowed.

Or they'd be fully subverted as we see.

Why was an orange clown and a felonious murdering hag our two choices out of all americans? Plenty here are dumb and dishonest - but really, few are at that level or close. We never had a choice - as long as it was one of the "selected" we were gonna be fine. Could it be something went wrong and the orange one wasn't one of those, somehow breaking into the rotten system due to real discontent for real reasons and not being dependent on party bucks to get heard? And now those who have really run things are running around worrying "if he wins we'll all swing from nooses" as Hillary said?

The current shoe-shop ray causing even more discontent is more a signature of our IC and the five eyes - see all the color revolutions. They're in line for those nooses and are trying to forestall that.

Re: Look, a Squirrel

How would they disallow elections given it's directly in the Constitution? That kind of thinking would logically lead to the US suffering a coup and total redo of government at some point in the past, given any prole backlash can be countered with a few strategic bombings and a willingness to go MAD if necessary.

same bots that helped swing

From the article: "These are the same bots that helped swing Donald Trump's 2016 electoral college victory."

Wow! This void statement from the Register probably has more weight and sub-sequential "damage" than 677,775 twitters glossing once in a while over political drips floating in the oceans of nonsense dripping from their overcrowded screens. Looking at the context and scale, the whole notion is rather nuts!

But that is the irony of this age! If Russian intelligence would have any overarching "evil" goal, then it would be to overheat and confuse the paranoid and hyper-excited Western mindset with more fake fakes and attempts at attempts which end up conflicting again with everything else implied before. And the population and politicians do the real work: self-destruction of their own narrative -- it breaks the back of nations.

I supposed Huma Abedin's husband wasn't into under age girls and therefore compromised significantly?

I supposed Bill Clinton wasn't paid $500,000 for a speech in Russia? In response to which Hilary was favorable about sanctions.

I suppose the Clinton foundation didn't take a $1.5m donation from Russia shortly before Hilary Clinton's state department signed the Uranium One deal selling 20% of all the United States uranium to Russia?

I supposed she didn't create ISIS to destablise Lybia and Syria? I suppose she didn't gloat at the death of Gaddafi?

I suppose she didn't go back to sleep and allow the murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his security detail in Benghazi?

I supposed Clinton didn't work in collusion with the DNC to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders?

I supposed Clinton didn't work with CNN commentator Donna Brazile to have the debate questions leaked prior to the event?

All of that and we now find out that the democrats are withholding a memo which shows that, under direction for the Obama administration the British intelligence services were spying on the Trump campaign and sharing that information with Clinton.